HILL COUNTY'S DUTIFUL SUNFLOWERS
Still here. Sort of. Still unemployed. I've been working on getting this manuscript together. It's going well. I've added several things in the past few days.
The biggest news is that I've gotten a new car. My previous car had suddenly started going downhill a few months ago, necessitating costly repairs, with more on the horizon. Having used it as a trade-in on the new one, I still have several months of repair payments on a car I no longer own. I took the new car out for its first extended drive yesterday. Just drove in the direction of Hillsboro and took a nondescript exit, following a Texas State Trooper vehicle for a long ways down a lonely highway, just to keep him guessing.
It was one of those drives where I just took turns without having any destination in mind, so many random turns left and right that I couldn't possibly retrace my steps. I went around a big curve and suddenly saw what looked like a carpet of yellow that extended all the way to the horizon. Sunflowers! I had never seen so many sunflowers. Acres and acres and acres of huge sunflowers! As generally happens when I take drives like this, I will go long stretches of time without anyone behind me, but when I want to slow down and look at something I can't, because an impatient driver is so close to me he's practically in my back seat. I kept slowing down, hoping he'd pass, but he was probably as distracted by all those flowers as I was. And it wasn't just one field, it was several, one after the other, on both sides of the road. When we finally passed the last one, the guy zoomed around me and sped off. I turned around and went back to have another look. I found a little turn-off, parked the car, and walked into one of the fields where I was suddenly swallowed by stalks and stalks of sunflowers, most of which were over six feet tall, and some with "faces" bigger than serving platters.
Thousands of sunflowers all around me, and each one facing the same direction. Standing there, I felt like I was in a huge crowd of people all obeying the same rules, quietly and resolutely facing east, waiting for ... something. Waiting so long they inevitably droop their heads in defeat, bend over, wither, and die. When I walked into the field, they were all faced away from me, making me feel there was something that everyone else knew about but that I couldn't see. The impulse was to stand on tip-toes, crane my neck, and push to the front so I could see what they were all looking at or waiting for. Thousands of plants waiting expectantly for, really, something that never comes. Let's just say that the futility-of-life analogy wasn't lost on me, especially in my current state of existential angst and extreme loneliness.
It was hot and sunny and, aside from the sounds of birds I couldn't see and the sound of dry, parched earth crunching beneath my feet, it was very quiet. I was going to say it was very still, but wind gusts were constant, and the whole field swayed frantically. Then calmed down. Then swayed frantically. Then calmed down.
I stayed there a long time. It was beautiful.
Heavily-filtered, dreamy vision of the road approaching Lake Aquilla.
The biggest news is that I've gotten a new car. My previous car had suddenly started going downhill a few months ago, necessitating costly repairs, with more on the horizon. Having used it as a trade-in on the new one, I still have several months of repair payments on a car I no longer own. I took the new car out for its first extended drive yesterday. Just drove in the direction of Hillsboro and took a nondescript exit, following a Texas State Trooper vehicle for a long ways down a lonely highway, just to keep him guessing.
It was one of those drives where I just took turns without having any destination in mind, so many random turns left and right that I couldn't possibly retrace my steps. I went around a big curve and suddenly saw what looked like a carpet of yellow that extended all the way to the horizon. Sunflowers! I had never seen so many sunflowers. Acres and acres and acres of huge sunflowers! As generally happens when I take drives like this, I will go long stretches of time without anyone behind me, but when I want to slow down and look at something I can't, because an impatient driver is so close to me he's practically in my back seat. I kept slowing down, hoping he'd pass, but he was probably as distracted by all those flowers as I was. And it wasn't just one field, it was several, one after the other, on both sides of the road. When we finally passed the last one, the guy zoomed around me and sped off. I turned around and went back to have another look. I found a little turn-off, parked the car, and walked into one of the fields where I was suddenly swallowed by stalks and stalks of sunflowers, most of which were over six feet tall, and some with "faces" bigger than serving platters.
Thousands of sunflowers all around me, and each one facing the same direction. Standing there, I felt like I was in a huge crowd of people all obeying the same rules, quietly and resolutely facing east, waiting for ... something. Waiting so long they inevitably droop their heads in defeat, bend over, wither, and die. When I walked into the field, they were all faced away from me, making me feel there was something that everyone else knew about but that I couldn't see. The impulse was to stand on tip-toes, crane my neck, and push to the front so I could see what they were all looking at or waiting for. Thousands of plants waiting expectantly for, really, something that never comes. Let's just say that the futility-of-life analogy wasn't lost on me, especially in my current state of existential angst and extreme loneliness.
It was hot and sunny and, aside from the sounds of birds I couldn't see and the sound of dry, parched earth crunching beneath my feet, it was very quiet. I was going to say it was very still, but wind gusts were constant, and the whole field swayed frantically. Then calmed down. Then swayed frantically. Then calmed down.
I stayed there a long time. It was beautiful.
Heavily-filtered, dreamy vision of the road approaching Lake Aquilla.